Mapping shows the KNP Complex has largely been kept out of the Giant Forest at Sequoia National Park.

Decades of fire prevention work by the National Park Service, and endless gallons of water, have given firefighters at Sequoia National Park an edge in protecting the Giant Forest and its iconic sequoia trees from the flames of the KNP Complex.

While the wildfire made a short foray into the forest, for the most part the flames stayed to the west and north of the Giant Forest, Jon Wallace, one of the fire bosses overseeing the battle against the fire complex, said Sunday.

"The fire moved up into the forest a little bit, but not a lot. Firefighters are really working hard up in there to contain that fire. The fortunate thing is the Park Service has done a lot of prescribed burning in there since the 1960s, and so it's making their job a lot easier," Wallace said during the morning briefing. "As that fire came out of the brush and timber a little lower on the slope and up into that Giant Forest, the flame lengths really dropped down, to two or three feet off the ground, and so firefighters have been able to work in there to really slow things down.

"There's also a myriad of walking trails in there, which have given firefighters places to work off of," he added. "The structures in the Giant Forest, the museum, all the infrastructure around the General Sherman tree, that's all got sprinklers on it, and firefighers are running those sprinklers pretty much nonstop to make sure everything stays wet. But right now, all the protection efforts in the Giant Forest are going really well."

Firefighters wrapped protective foil around the sequoias in Sequoia National Park's Giant Forest.

Firefighters also wrapped some of the towering trees in the Giant Forest with a tin-foil like material that reportedly can withstand temperatures up to 1,200° Fahrenheit for short periods of time. Similar protective steps were taken with buildings in the area.

Overall, though, the hundreds of firefighters battling the KNP Complex have a long way to go. Sunday morning the fire was estimated to have covered nearly 22,000 acres and remained entirely uncontained.

Red flag conditions -- warmer, drier conditions with gusting winds -- complicated the battle and led to postponement Sunday of a media tour of some of the burned areas. The forest called for more of the same in the coming days, conditions that were predicted to generate "active to extreme fire behavior."

Wallace did say that work around Wuksachi Lodge and its related structures kept the flames away from those buildings.

"Yesterday we actually burned around the lodges and all the structures at Wuksachi to the west of the Lodgepole area," he said. "So that increased the (fire's) acreage somewhat, we had to get those structures safe. Crews are in there now mopping up, making sure that those structures aren't impacted in any way. But for the most part, everything looks really good up there now."

The fire was sparked by a lightning storm September 9. While the complex started out as two separate blazes, they merged as they closed in on the Generals Highway. The fire was burning through stands of live timber, intermixed with stands of 10-year-old dead trees, and brush. More than 600 firefighters were battling the flames and working to protect structures.